When you\u2019re thinking about opening an online store for the first time, you need to consider a series of factors that will be crucial to making sure you\u2019re on the road to success\u2014although, as with everything, there are always exceptions.<\/p>\n
In outline, these are the points to keep in mind:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Choosing the platform
\n\u2022 Design
\n\u2022 Commitment
\n\u2022 Keeping the store \u201calive\u201d
\n\u2022 Social media
\n\u2022 SEO
\n\u2022 Ongoing customer service
\n\u2022 Monitoring tools, customer reviews and online reputation<\/p>\n
Your choice of platform can affect your store\u2019s rankings and performance.<\/strong> Design: simplicity and functionality are your allies.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n If we don\u2019t have much experience, we should start with a simple, intuitive design for our potential customers. Later on, with data in hand, we can start getting creative and redesign the store. If you don\u2019t have time to devote to it, don\u2019t start.<\/strong> SEO, our best friend.<\/strong> Build loyalty the oldest way: with good customer service.<\/strong> We have the data\u2014let\u2019s use it.<\/strong> A simple way to approach creating an online store is to picture all these steps as if we were talking about a physical store. In the end, the creation process is very similar, and the basic concepts are identical for both types of business.<\/p>\n Is there anything else you\u2019d add that you consider important?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When you\u2019re thinking about opening an online store for the first time, you need to consider a series of factors that will be crucial to making sure you\u2019re on the road to success\u2014although, as with everything, there are always exceptions. In outline, these are the points to keep in mind: \u2022 Choosing the platform \u2022 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2507],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emarketing"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nBroadly speaking, we need to make sure its structure is 100% indexable by search engines and properly optimized, that its interface is intuitive, and that it simplifies the work we\u2019ll do every day. It should also be scalable so we\u2019re ready when success arrives. It should let us edit meta tags, with friendly URLs, heading tags in its structure (H1, H2…), Rich Snippets… and fast load times.<\/p>\n
\nRely on the advice of the company you hire for the service\u2014experience is very important.<\/p>\n
\nToday, succeeding with an online store means spending time on it every day to keep it \u201calive.\u201d If we constantly change offers, run new promotions and contests, and engage socially, we have a good chance of success. Google currently pays a lot of attention to the social engagement<\/strong> of websites, and a store is no exception: if we get our potential customers involved, we\u2019re already well ahead.<\/p>\n
\nToday, if you ask me whether you need to invest in SEO, in 99% of cases I\u2019ll give you a resounding yes. There may be 1% of products with an unsaturated market where investing in online marketing<\/strong> isn\u2019t decisive for success, but everyone else shouldn\u2019t even think about skipping these services: if we don\u2019t invest in online marketing, our days are numbered. Fierce competition in almost every sector makes it essential. We must choose carefully who handles it, be wary of short-term promises and invest consistently.<\/p>\n
\nWhen a customer makes a purchase, we need to keep them informed about their order at every status change. It sounds easy, but it isn\u2019t. You have to strike a balance in communications: send important messages and be direct and clear. If we overdo it, customers won\u2019t read our emails or may even mark them as spam. I recommend rewarding their purchases to increase repeat buying across our customer base.<\/p>\n
\nGoogle Analytics gives us a complete \u201cX-ray\u201d of our visitors\u2019 profiles and how they use our online store. We need to learn to read all this data very well so we can take the right actions to improve any metric that helps us sell more.
\nIf we receive input from our customers, we should also take it very seriously to learn what they think we\u2019re doing right and wrong. Customers will shape our online store\u2019s reputation on the internet, and it should be positive; if it isn\u2019t, Google will penalize us. Remember: the customer is always right\u2014and if they\u2019re not, we let them be.<\/p>\n